Tag Archives: horse

Much like Christmas for me, Chinese New Year is the annual opportunity to spend time with the family, play games, repay your sleep debt and eat often and well. Unlike Christmas, conversation occurs mostly in one of three Chinese dialects, most of your meals are taken outdoors and New Year’s Day cuisine is completely vegetarian!

Click through on the video below for my take on the Yap family celebration.

Well quite, I hear you cry. Almost in Russia, Qinaliq (pr. Khunalukh) is a world away from Baku. Ladies wear headscarves, bees roam freely in the unkept meadows, villagers burn animal shit for heating, and houses rooves provide pathways and front balconies for those higher up.

Four km from Ukraine, the Merry Cemetery in Sapanza, Romania is made of carved wooden crosses, painted and inscribed with a first person witty account of the life of the deceased. Whether they were a milkmaid, a truck driver, an alcoholic or a whore it’s all there; as are graves of too many poor kids killed in car accidents.

The EU has a way to go to bring the surrounding Maramures region in line with the remainder of the union. Hay and horses abound, as does a huge wooden monastery in the trees:

Stroll down the Caspian waterfront in Baku, shop in Calvin Klein and dine in lavish surrounds. Stop by for a game of nard and slip a little something to the police when you skip the lights. Take a $15 taxi ride in the oil boom capital.

Step away to the mountains where scudding clouds, natural gas vents, shit as fuel and washed away roads are more the spirit, visible when you’re not playing nard and funding the police checkpoints – or shelling out for a duvet for the night

Split, yet united by ripping off the foreigner, nard and bribes; that’s how I see Azerbaijan.